A family game night is a wonderful habit that I’m sure a lot of us are already doing. But today I wanted to share what we have done that might be a little different.
The Habit of Family Game Night
We try to have family game night on Fridays. If your house is anything like ours, everyone has a say about what game should be played. “Oh, I don’t like that one, I always lose.” “Dad, that game is boring!” “Why can’t we play this one, we never play this one…” And Mom and Dad are usually thinking, “Oh, that game has too many pieces,” or sigh, “that game goes on forever…”
We developed as system that has completely eliminated the what-should-we-play battle. We took inventory of all our games and wrote the names of the games on strips of paper and then put them all in a cup. Each game night, someone draws out a game and that is what we play for the night. We set that paper aside and we don’t play that one again until all the other games have been drawn and played. This way we go through all the games, everyone knows they will get a chance to play their favorite eventually, and the best part… once we’ve gone through all the games, we get to buy a new game.
We also discovered as we were going through the games, that there were a few that nobody really wants to play for one reason or another. What a great time to clean out the game closet and give away a few or add them to the garage sale pile!
-by Kendra, first published July 2010
I love this! Tackling several issues head on while having FUN. And a reward to buy a new game. This is great.
Love the idea for tackling what does end up being a big to-do around here sometimes. We don’t have a set night for games and maybe we do need to introduce that, but we do LOVE playing them!
Just found your blog from MM. Love the idea of cycling through the games. We always end up playing the same ones. There are a few “joke” games that are always brought up but never played. Outburst for instance, we somehow own the 1970 version so almost all the questions are really out of date. Like name oven brands, all but one have gone out of business.
I love the name of your blog, looks like we have much in common.
Love it!
We have the same issue in our family. I’ll have to try that!